Valediction
by Elspeth.Davidson
Summary: SamJack oneshot, just before Carter leaves to take command of Atlantis [SGA Season Four]. It's been ten good years...


**Valediction**

I open the door and it's Jack, standing there in his awkward-but-not way, as he's done so many times before - but won't again for a long, long time. These next few minutes are going to be uncomfortable, to say the least.

"Hey, Carter. Hear you've got a new assignment." He has his hands behind his back; something's in them, no doubt.

"Yes, sir." I open the door wider and stand aside. "Come in."

Right on cue, he holds out his gift as he walks past me. "Thought we should celebrate."

I look down, half-expecting a bottle of wine ... a six-pack? I try not to grin. Typical Jack. It's Guinness, already cold. "You flew out from Washington to give me beer?"

"Hey, it's good stuff."

He leads the way into the living room and we sit, on separate couches, leaning forward over the coffee table to pop the cans open. I know enough not to offer him a glass. I've known him for a long time, haven't I? Ten years.

Ten good years.

And I know he's come to say goodbye.

We sit here quietly, studying the aluminum tabs on the cans, the little rivets holding them in place. Right now, we just need to _be_. Together. Letting our silence say what we will not.

_As virtuous men pass mildly away,  
And whisper to their souls, to go,  
Whilst some of their sad friends do say:  
'The breath goes now', and some say: 'No':_

_So let us melt, and make no noise,  
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;  
'Twere profanation of our joys  
To tell the laity our love._

We each finish a pint before I speak, each word shattering the peace like a bullet crunching into plexiglass. "It's an indefinite assignment, sir. Atlantis."

"Yeah. I heard." He crushes his empty can with one hand; the only positive clue I have to his emotional state. "We've been through a lot, Carter. You can handle it. You're good. One of the best."

I feel his eyes looking for mine, and I finally work up the guts to meet them. One last time. And with that glance, something snaps into place, and we both know that this is not about officers in the United States Air Force. We've always known. But we're okay with it. Because sometimes, we treasure most what we haven't touched.

_Moving of the earth brings harms and fears;  
Men reckon what it did and meant:  
But trepidation of the spheres,  
Though greater far, is innocent._

_Dull sublunary lover's love  
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit  
Absence, because it doth remove  
Those things which elemented it._

It's only a moment, this moment, but I wish it would warp and stretch to infinity; that theoretical, sideways figure eight.

A kiss would tarnish it.

I know him, know him so well, and that knowledge will burrow its own little wormhole; a gossamer thread between the galaxies.

_But we, by a love so much refin'd  
That our selves know not what it is,  
Inter-assured of the mind,  
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss._

_Our two souls therefore, which are one,  
Though I must go, endure not yet  
A breach, but an expansion,  
Like gold to airy thinness beat._

We're a good team. We can do this. We can sit here, in this semi-skewed silence, hands wrapped around cold aluminum, and say our farewells. He's staying, I'm going, and that's all there is to it.

People do this all the time. Come and go, go and come. It's the kind of world we live in.

But the kind of world that Sam and Jack live in - I'm going hundreds of lightyears away. In a single step. A simple spin of the dial, a turn of the wheel of fate, and I'm setting up shop in another galaxy, watched by unknown constellations composed of unnamed stars.

And a tiny piece of Jack in my eyes, slightly acerbic and a world to save. For the tenth time.

_If they be two, they are two so  
As stiff twin compasses are two:  
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show  
To move, but doth, if the other do;_

_And though it in the centre sit,  
Yet when the other far doth roam,  
It leans, and hearkens after it,  
And grows erect, as that comes home._

He's my anchor. He'll be here - well, as long as he doesn't get himself killed.

It won't ever be the same, not with the vacuum between us - but somehow, it will. He's Jack. I'm Sam. He's O'Neill. I'm Carter.

And somewhere, sometime, we will again slouch over a coffee table, beers in hand, and share that tender awkwardness that belongs only to us.

_Such wilt thou be to me, who must,  
Like the other foot, obliquely run:  
Thy firmness makes my circle just,  
And makes me end where I begun._

* * *

**_Author's Note: _**The poem is John Donne's _A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning_. With Sam moving to Atlantis, I wondered how that last meeting might have gone; I think the poem is not only beautiful and fitting, but the juxtaposition of language styles adds to the awkwardness. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Many thanks to sunny-historian for the idea (see the Sayers/Wimsey fic _Doe not Die_). This is my first SG fic - please R&R, because I'm scared to death I didn't get the characterizations right! 


End file.
